Semiconductor devices containing integrated circuits (ICs) or discrete devices are used in a wide variety of electronic apparatus. The IC devices (or chips, or discrete devices) comprise a miniaturized electronic circuit that has been manufactured in the surface of a substrate of semiconductor material. The circuits are composed of many overlapping layers, including layers containing dopants that can be diffused into the substrate (called diffusion layers) or ions that are implanted (implant layers) into the substrate. Other layers are conductors (polysilicon or metal layers) or connections between the conducting layers (via or contact layers). IC devices or discrete devices can be fabricated in a layer-by-layer process that uses a combination of many steps, including growing layers, imaging, deposition, etching, doping and cleaning. Silicon wafers are typically used as the substrate and photolithography is used to mark different areas of the substrate to be doped or to deposit and define polysilicon, insulators, or metal layers.
One of these layers is an insulating layer that is often made of dielectric materials. In some instances, the insulating layer can be made by depositing a precursor gas mixture of the desired dielectric material in a vacuum chamber or plasma-enhanced vacuum chamber followed by densification and flow of the deposited dielectric material in a furnace at a high temperature of about 950 to 1000° C. for about 5 to 6 hours.